Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the outgoing White House press secretary, is seriously considering running for governor of Arkansas, according to three people who have spoken to her in recent days.

While Sanders and her associates have been quietly talking about the possibility for months, sometimes in jest, she has shown renewed interest in the prospect as she’s started contemplating her post-White House plans, the people said.

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Sanders and her allies have started making calls to donors and Republican operatives in the state. Though neither Sanders nor her associates have directly sought support for a potential campaign, some who have spoken with them see the outreach as a sign that she’s weighing a run.

“She’s extremely serious,” said one of the people who has talked to her.

Some of Sanders’ allies counteredthat she’s just checking in with longtime friends ahead of her upcoming return to the state, and they insisted that she would be making these calls whether she wanted to run for governor or not. Sanders declined to comment for this article.

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Sanders’ potential candidacy got a huge boost last week from her boss, President Donald Trump, who publicly encouraged her to run after privately prodding her to do so for months. In the process, Trump set off a wave of speculation in Washington and Little Rock about whether she’s serious about trying to move into the Governor’s Mansion.

“It has been the nonstop political conversation since it hit, and will probably be so now going forward,” said Bill Vickery, an Arkansas political consultant, adding, “That indicates what sort of big-time player she is in terms of the political landscape if indeed she follows through.”

Trump again publicly teased the prospect of Sanders' running for governor on Tuesday night during his re-election kickoff rally in Orlando, Fla.

“I have a feeling she’s going to be running for a certain gubernatorial position,” the president said before bringing Sanders onstage. It was her last trip with Trump as press secretary before she steps down at the end of the month.

If she runs, Sanders will be able to tap into the massive network her father, Mike Huckabee, built over a decade as governor. She’d also probably benefit from her sky-high name recognition, her connection to Trump, who remains popular in the state, and her relationship with another influential politician there: Republican Sen. John Boozman. Sanders managed Boozman’s 2010 Senate campaign.

“She would be formidable if she were to get into the race,” said Roby Brock, a longtime Arkansas political reporter. “She’s got the Huckabee political machine, the Boozman political machine and the Trump political machine.”

Speculation about Sanders is running rampant in Arkansas. Jon Gilmore, a political strategist for the state’s current governor, Asa Hutchinson, noted on Twitter last week that two websites that could serve a Sanders political run were registered on the same day last month, SarahforGovernor.com and SarahforArkansas.com.

People close to Sanders stressed that she was focused first on spending time with her husband and school-age children. They also noted that the next gubernatorial election in the state wasn’t until 2022, giving her plenty of time to make up her mind.

But Arkansas Republican operatives said she’d likely rake in more money than any of the other candidates expected to run — both from in-state supporters and national backers.

Though Sanders came under heavy criticism in Washington for sparring with reporters, doing away with regular press briefings and defending Trump at every turn, she and the president she serves are still popular in Arkansas. Trump trounced Hillary Clinton there in 2016, and polls conducted after the 2018 midterm elections showed that the vast majority of Arkansas Republican voters still supported the president. Trump’s job approval rating topped 50 percent in the state last year, roughly 10 points higher than his typical nationwide numbers.

A person who knows Sanders said she would probably be in demand once she moved back to Arkansas this summer, adding that she’d already had requests for speaking engagements. Several of her associates also wondered whether she’d write a book. The Arkansas Republican Party is planning to host a welcome reception in her honor this summer, the group’s chairman said in an interview.

Though Sarah Sanders has faced criticism in Washington for her tête-à-têtes with the media, she's still largely popular in her home state. | Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

“We are very pleased to have her coming back to Arkansas,” said Doyle Webb, chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party.“Arkansans believe she has done a superb job as press secretary for the president, and I wouldn’t want to speculate about what her political future is. I’m fairly certain that [Trump’s] support and any support she’s built on her own would be a considerable [asset].”

Sanders got her start in politics working for her father’s political campaigns, and later served as national political director for his 2008 presidential campaign and campaign manager for his 2016 campaign. She co-founded a consulting firm in Arkansas and was an adviser to both Tom Cotton’s 2014 Senate campaign and Tim Pawlenty’s 2012 presidential campaign. She later joined Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign as a senior adviser before entering the White House.

Her friends say Sanders has always had bigger ambitions — “Sarah can’t sit still for long,” one of them said. The possibility of Sanders’ running for office has been a frequent topic of conversation in the White House for more than a year. Rumors about her running for Senate to replace Cotton if he were tapped for a job in the administration were quickly replaced with gossip about her running for governor.

When Trump caught wind, he fixated on it, regularly ribbing her about it and encouraging her to run, White House officials said.

“I got a phone call the other day from one of the people who worked on her dad’s presidential campaign as a fundraiser, so I think she’s probably in the very, very early stages of just touching base with … his network,” said an Arkansas Republican consultant, who, like others in this article, requested anonymity to speak freely about the private discussions.

Because the 2022 gubernatorial election is so far away, no candidates have formally announced yet. But at least three other people are said to be interested: Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin, Attorney General Leslie Rutledge and Arkansas Senate President Jim Hendren.

Some early skepticism about Sanders is already spreading in Arkansas Republican circles. Her critics are privately arguing that it’s unclear what her campaign message would be, and they say she needs to spend time reconnecting with issues that the state’s voters care about. They also note that being governor and serving constituents requires a very different skill set than being a spokesperson, adding that she's never held elected office.

“Her dad has been out of office for a long time here,” the Arkansas Republican consultant said. “He lost the state to Trump in the presidential campaign, so I don’t know that Sarah getting into the race is an automatic green light that she sort of walks right into the nomination. She’s going to be like all the other candidates and she’s going to have to get out here and run for it.”